By Eric Le Roy
Content 16+ I get a lot of ‘creative’ and ‘analytical’ stories and essays from ChatGPT these days, which would be fine with me, except that they have my students’ signatures on them. So what should I think of all this? And what should I do?
First, some background. I am now an ESL (English as Second Language) tutor. I also write books and blogs. My students used to be mostly Russian (in person, when I lived in Moscow) and now are mostly Chinese. Online. In China, education is a fierce process. Exam Prep, Exam, Exam Prep, Exam, Exam Prep, Exam. There is more stress and tooth-and-nail competition in a Chinese school than in a World Cup football final. And the parents are fanatics. They expect 8-year-olds to read books like To Kill a Mockingbird and enter the John Locke Essay competition.
You think I am exaggerating. In fact, I am downplaying it. The likely outcome of a Chinese student’s life is determined during these early exam-filled years. 99 out of 100 isn’t good enough when the kid sitting next to you gets 100 out of a 100. You don’t believe me? Find your nearest Chinese friends or colleague and ask them.
Therefore, when it comes to essay writing, a first draft is all that most of them have time for. In other words, they are getting only half of the writing experience when they compose their papers. The other half is what we do in class. They simply don’t have time to devote anywhere near the kind of work on their essays that I do on my blogs. It’s fine. I can live with that arrangement, and it always means that I have plenty to work with in class instead of having to invent lesson plans, which in writing classes have little value: all the theories can be crammed into a single introductory hour; the rest is pure workshop and activation. You have to write to learn to write.
But now another Martian has landed among the Earthlings: ChatGPT. I have a lot of opinions about AI, most of them favorable in the sense of sharing of AI’s growing ability to duplicate the ‘human’ experience in the very midst of real humans. What do I mean? I mean – and have been saying so for a while – the AI robots are becoming more and more like humans as humans become more and more like the AI robots. It’s fascinating to watch this process. It’s like one of those old Biology films I used to see in class where the growth of a flower is speeded up so that from seed to blossom takes only a few seconds.
Or is it more like a triangular building separating two streets but coming to a point where they will meet, even collide? On one side are the humans, and on the other side are the aliens, unbeknownst to each other.Soon they will be jaw to jaw. Or jaw to tentacle. The unfolding drama is spectacular, as in one of those made-for-TV movies where the unsuspecting wife comes home early and, upon hearing what sounds like groans coming from the bedroom, barges in and finds hubby drilling a pork pipe line in the next door neighbor. Ahhh the moment of discovery!!
What we are discovering now is that we no longer even know for sure what it means to be human. AI evolution is forcing us to think along those lines, even to the point of recognising that AI is not merely part of a technological paradigm but maybe also an first class engineer in the Evolutionary process. Most people today cling to the idea that people are people and machines are machines and never the twain shall meet. I think the opposite. We are in the process of becoming a hybrid.
I am an old soul who professes little in the way of technological proficiency. I stick to the Cro-Magnon ways until it becomes obvious that I’m cutting off my nose to spite my face – and then it’s time to move on. If I need help, I ask for it. But Art and Writing are subjects I know a little more about, and what do I see? I see that AI has entered these once-sacrosanct realms and is making sharp inroads. Try it sometime with an essay topic, if you haven’t already done so. Take an idea, such as, “Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse?” Or “What is the Best Way to Deal with Hay Fever?” (You have to word your question in a sensible manner that the machine can ‘understand’.) Do that, click the doodad in your hand and watch the games begin. In two seconds you will have enough research to write a dissertation. You thinking I’m fucking with you? I’m not. Try it for yourself..
I use ChatGPT all the time now for research purposes. I work with a few university students who have sought my help with writing their academic papers. They send me the scholarly articles they have been assigned which I make note of, peruse the abstract, and then discard. I hang onto them because they will be useful in the Bibliography (or Reference) section. Then I shitcan them because most academic writing is enough to drive you insane, especially in the Field of Humanities. In that sphere, the erudite professors are desperate to validate themselves as serious scientists instead of banal, pontificating wankers, and so they write these turgid, tofu tracks for publication which will be read only by people just like themselves or grad students who have no choice.
I assure you: choose an author or poet you like and then fish up a dozen or so academic papers written on the work of said artist. You will never go near that writer again. Whatever you loved, whatever rocked your imagination in the first place, will be lobotomized by the Tenure Tribe. You will end up looking like Jack Nicholson at the end of the film “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. But students are told they must acquire the particular skills needed to churn out this verbal equivalent of old Soviet architecture which usually – I know it firsthand – involves a single not particularly inspiring idea wrapped up in a winding cloth of ‘secondary sources’, all stacked up like piece of Lego to create an orderly procession through Deserts of Boredom.
Sorry, but that’s academia in my book.
But……
ChatGPT to the rescue !!! For now I can do all the research in two minutes that it would take two weeks to do on that Horse’s Ass of an outfit called Google. It used to be the place to look. Now it seems to be run by money-grubbers and Lefties. Once upon a time you could access articles without a problem. Now, even summary-analysis links to look up stuff about novels, plays, and short stories costs money. You want a sample student essay to show your young scholars? They’ll let you read a couple of paragraphs and then block the rest unless you sign up, i.e. give them some money. The rest of the ‘research’ material available is presented by feminists. All the big magazines and periodicals want your money. If I gave out my credit card information to all these grifters, then every scammer in the world would know my personal information – if they don’t already.
ChatGPT, on the other hand, gives you vast amounts of material, several alternative options, all stacked neatly into subtopics and presented without an uncrossed ‘t’, undotted ‘i’ or misspelled word. If you want it to write the essay itself, all you have to do is ask. How many words? 500? 1000? No problem. You want a formal essay or an informal one? No problem. I have to admit, it’s truly amazing. And so I use it, and I encourage my students to use it.
But sparingly. And only for deadline-deadlock purposes. I try to show my students the difference between a tool and a substitute for the real deal. Nor would I ever Dream of letting AI into my blogs. Point of pride. But my students can’t resist. It is so easy and convenient (which is the goal of all modern life, right?) Moreover, it saves them a pisspot full of Time – and Time is the Universal Foe of Chinese students. They are Always Busy. Americans, Canadians, and Europeans have no idea.
So more and more the Thought Robots appear. What amazes me is that the students – or is it their parents? – don’t mind a bit. Plagiarism sounds to them like some kind bacteria to be studied in a Botany class. They don’t grasp that I can look at a paper ‘authored’ by some ten-year old who doesn’t know the present tense from the past tense (a typical predicament for Chinese students trying to master the English obsession with time relationships) and immediately tell by the unwieldy academic-style language that the paper might have been written by The Good Fairy or an Unbottled Genii –but not by them. I try to make this point to them as gently as possible. They pay my bills, so I don’t want to offend them overly much. Unless I’m in a bad mood.
The problem with all this is that I know there is something simply wrong here. For what will the student learn if all is turned over to the machine? And, I also ask myself: in how many other areas of life and the living of it are people now forfeiting, chucking away whole hills and valleys within the worlds of their minds, and simply feeding chunks of themselves to the robot vultures circling around their ears? It is not a problem that concerns me directly – other than from a teaching standpoint – because I don’t need AI to do my writing for me and because, given my age, by the time guys like me are no longer needed, I will be long gone anyway.
But I care. At least enough to see the writing on the wall here (pun intended). And I ask myself – isn’t this all part of the evolutionary process I spoke of before? After all, evolution doesn’t give a damn who gets hurt in the process. It just is, and it does what it does. And if the overall human experience on this planet is now becoming Human + AI, then so be it. There have been radical changes in the world before now and there will be more later. And, after all, the Industrial Revolution didn’t put everybody out of work, and the Camera did not spell the end of Art. People will find a way, and no matter how screwed up some of the younger generation now seem to dinosaurs like myself, no doubt they will say the same things one day about the ‘Generation %*&(&#’ that they themselves will have produced. That is, unless the machines are doing all the fucking by then. (“Where is that snot-nosed little robotnik? Why isn’t she doing her homework?”)
As for me, I will continue as I am. For what you are reading today – for better or for worse – is ME. And I had a lot of fun doing it. I try to LIVE my life. Sometimes that means walking in the rain.
